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Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Nothing Finer

Lying in bed cuddling with GZ, thinking ahead to his fifth birthday, still more than half a year away. A Big Kid jokes from the other room, coming at me from however-many years into the future, “come on Gavriel Zev, you’re getting married – time for your wedding nummies!”

There will be no wedding nummies; five years old is the End of the Line.

But wow. What other opportunity is there to take a busy-busy, active 4-year-old and stop him cold in his tracks to snuggle up, skin-on-skin, with his mommy, for 15 minutes at the end of a frantic day? What better way is there to cuddle a kid who’s not feeling well, who needs to hang on, to be a baby, just for a little while? There is no better way, and this is as it should be: when it’s time, it’s time. I read about 8-year-olds nursing and I shudder; everybody has a line, I think, beyond which it’s TIME. Mine is five.

(I’m sure many shudder when they think about 4, or 3; I think most mamas still prefer their child to wean before he’s old enough to talk about it… let alone READ about it.)

At his age, YM – the oldest – was so big, so mature; him and me, a couple, taking care of baby EC (there are 3 months in the fall when their ages are two years apart opening the vast chasm between 2 and 4). Camping on his own with my parents, away in daycare all day; I feel like we barely knew each other.

That fifth birthday is arbitrary, but so is any age, and if we make it that far, five is when it will be. There’s a limit to this closeness and a time when he will be ready to unlatch and jump, two feet forward, into big-kidness.